A Summer Jog Along the Esplanade - Boston, Massachusetts

Red eye flights always sound better in theory. While these late-night flights are not great for sleeping, they are great for saving time and money. Cheaper and time efficient, I like the ring of that. Plus, perhaps I could even sleep decently well on the plane. Even if I couldn’t, I am in my twenties. Sleep be damned; I can rest when I am dead. So, glowing in my frugality, I booked a midnight flight from Los Angeles to Boston, a trip of about 5 and a half hours. With this flight, I could travel across the country, get a few hours of sleep, and wake up in Boston with a full day to hang out with one of my best friends, Michael. I was of course concerned that taking a red eye flight would be uncomfortable and unpleasant. But I firmly believe that one’s happiness is equal to one’s reality minus expectations. Therefore, I could be perfectly happy on this red eye flight if I could set conservative expectations about sleeping. Deep slumber seemed improbable. However, sneaking in only a few hours felt like a modest assumption.

Thanks to the formula of happiness, I felt destined to enjoy the flight.

But then it was five in the morning, and I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. As the cabin lights turned on, signaling to the passengers our descent, it was clear to me, despite having bleary eyes and a foggy mind, that theory had failed, and my expectations had been too high. After a few moments of throwing myself a pity party about how awful this flight had been, I remembered a performance by the profane and hilarious comedian Louis CK. In his bit, he comments that flying, one of the best and most beautiful inventions, is wasted on the most ungrateful people. Indeed, to all the adventurers of old, the people of the twenty-first century are a sad sight. Paraphrasing Louis, we fly through the air incredibly like birds, partaking in the miracle of human flight all the while snacking on pretzels and drinking ginger ale, yet we can’t help but notice how little leg room we have. It is beautiful how great and advanced the modern age has become. Though, it is shameful that our expectations advance all the faster.

When the plane landed at Logan Airport, the morning was a sterile and cold gray color. Thick and voluminous clouds blanketed the atmosphere. It was raining and the droplets, to my surprise, were warm and lovely in contrast to the bleak sky. Despite a sleepless night, I had found energy in the anticipation of seeing Michael. We had been roommates and fraternity brothers at the University of California, Berkeley. In school, we quickly developed our friendship owing in part to his magnetic kindness and humility as well as our shared passion for worldly experiences: travel, the outdoors, cuisines, etc.

As I am coming to learn as I mature into adulthood, time and the times are always changing. While I felt almost inseparable from Michael in school, we now were separated by the continental U.S. After graduating from UC Berkeley, he moved to Boston to help people gamble more in a sports betting business and I moved to Los Angeles to turn money into more money in asset management. We had both become well-paid and respectable yuppies, a fact that we are both very fortunate to share. But money can’t teleport your best friend across three thousand miles. And while we texted and called often, the online connection—no matter the WIFI strength—could never compete with hanging out in the flesh. Face-to-face time turned into FaceTime and as most college graduates know, maintaining friendships over distance—well maintaining friendships period—is challenging. At some point, the texts and calls with Michael started to feel like work. And while love, romantic or platonic, does require work to flourish, I was afraid that if we didn’t see each other in person soon, I would become a colder and perhaps empty friend. I was terrified by the thought that we could drift away, slowly but surely, as he navigated life along the Atlantic and I the Pacific. I was terrified that one day, I would remember him as an “old college friend”, a phrase that the Boomers, Xers, and Millennials said that I despised just as much as the “glory days”. “Old college friend” might well mean someone that you used to know.

Of course, as long as he and I put in the work to remain close, none of the above would transpire. That is why I came to Boston. Quality time together, a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, a rowdy Red Sox game, and a lobster roll would put my overblown fears to rest.

After collecting at baggage claim, I took the MBTA, Boston’s public transit, which conveniently and quickly cut across East Boston and over Boston Harbor, a calming and pretty view. I got off at a stop in the North End, the neighborhood where Michael was living. The North End is Boston’s oldest residential community and feels the part. Brownstones, brick tenement walkups, line the narrow and cobblestone streets that wind like the paths of a maze. Had it not been for the obvious twenty-first century stores and vehicles, the ambience would have been that of the early 1900s. The community felt acutely historic, boasting the proud Paul Revere statue and the Freedom Trail (Revere’s supposed route to warn of the English’s arrival) that cut across the streets with golden colored bricks. Today, the North End is known as Boston’s Little Italy and boasts many patio-style restaurants, old-school delis, and Italian Americans who look and sound like the inspiration of Hollywood depicted mobsters.

After unpacking at Michael’s walkup apartment, he recommended we should go for a long run. While running is an excellent way to see a city, I was woozy with fatigue. In most circumstances, I would have colorfully declined this morning exercise; however, I had recently finished David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, a book which—in the parlance of Goggins himself—reminds the reader that he is a soft piece of shit but with indominable will, this shit can harden into a bad mother-you-know-what. Furthermore, Michael was antagonizing me, pointing out that another friend of ours, Shane, had ran a half a marathon as soon as he landed from his red eye flight. Perfect, I had both Goggins and Michael telling me I was being soft. Touché; let’s run. But first, caffeine.

The North End, like Italy I imagine, has quaint cafes that serve extraordinarily good coffee. We ordered espresso shots at Caffè Paradiso, a lovely and traditional open air Italian coffeehouse with small tables and chairs that viewed the streetscape. As is custom in the North End, we paid in cash. We sat down to wait for our espressos, looking towards the cobblestoned street. The fragrance of rain on asphalt mixed with the rich smell of coffee. The clinking sounds of mugs and tinctures pattered the café like the light rain on the awning. The streets were quiet on this Saturday morning, with the occasional car passing by in a low humming sound. The North End grocers and other shop owners on the street were discussing the day’s delivery of ingredients. Like the sky, the street was gray and muted in color but somehow the scene felt nostalgically warm. The espresso arrived. We sipped the chocolate-colored concoction in quiet conversation.

After finishing up at the café, we started to run along the Charles River Esplanade, a pleasant riverwalk that lines various neighborhoods of Boston (North End, West End, Beacon Hill, Black Bay, and Cambridge). The esplanade has the Charles River on one side and often a highway opposite. While cars may zip on the road about twenty yards away, the esplanade largely appears like a natural landscape and offers the taste of the outdoors amid the bustle of the city. Lush, green, and well-trimmed grass often runs parallel to the paved biking and running path. Flocks of geese waddle through the grass lawns and other waterfowl can be seen floating easily in the river. Shrubs, flowers, and trees are tastefully landscaped and placed along the promenade. Benches adjacent to the water create quaint views to admire the sereneness of the river.

Whereas the North End that morning was sleepy, the esplanade was lively with fellow runners. As we ran along the south bank, passing geese and scenic vistas along the way, it became clear that Boston has a well-deserved reputation for its ardent running culture. While there were runners of all speeds, shapes and sizes, there were clearly some professional runners amongst us. They were easy to point out with their zero fat bodies, accentuated by wiry limbs bulging with tendons and veins. That and they also whipped past us seemingly as fast as cars.  

It is odd how us guys do our best communicating when we don’t look at each other. Talking shoulder to shoulder at bar countertops, driving and facing the road, or case in point running together, men seem to be allergic to sustained eye contact. Michael and I had a lot to talk about on this trip and luckily for us, we still had more than ten miles to run. A topic I was very keen to hear about was Michael’s girlfriend, Lucía.

From all of our calls and FaceTimes, Lucía was, as I was told, the complete package: super smart, cute, adventurous, and prudent in her finances. She was international, which for a worldly man like Michael maybe was a sweet bonus. She hailed from a lesser-known town in Northern Spain and on their first date at a local Boston bar, they spoke in Spanish for an hour straight. In imperfect language, her in clumsy English and him in fumbling Spanish, they somehow found the right words. Buzzed and cheerful, Michael was so excited that as soon as he got home, he raved about her to the boys (our college clique) over text. If there was a Yelp for dates, Lucía would have received five out of five stars. As the good friends that the boys are, we were ecstatic that he had found a Spanish senorita and that he was excited.

But before I talk more about Lucía and Michael, which certainly reveals more about me than them, let me digress on how they happened upon each other. They had met on the dating app Hinge which had—and has—taken Generation Z by storm. Hinge markets itself as the app “designed to be deleted”, a slogan of pure marketing genius that couldn’t be true, especially considering I had deleted and redownloaded dating apps like Tinder more times than I could count.

But it would appear Hinge was a different, better type of dating app. Apparently, it optimized for compatibility whereas apps like Bumble and Tinder optimized for cheap thrills. Hinge’s user interface is clean, and a user vertically and slowly scrolls across another user’s profile, filled with pictures and text prompts. With only a handful of “likes” to use per day, one must be judicious, carefully picking people with intent whereas apps like Bumble and Tinder encourage brainless swiping, like an instantly gratifying “hot or not” exercise. In essence, Hinge felt like a dating app that was designed for more wholesome dating. And the young people in America flocked to it, and in mass (me included). Why, I don’t know. My opinion, or projection per say, was that Generation Z migrated towards Hinge because they were hungry for real connection with real people. They were tired of consuming pleasure and wanted instead to find a person who could produce it sustainably. But perhaps most of all, they were tired of being lonely, and filling that void with one-night stands that made them feel even lonelier thereafter. But by the grace of Silicon Valley, venture capital, and some whiz developer who had written one hell of an optimization algorithm, Hinge could fill the emptiness of the young. And as evidenced by Michael, it could help you find someone who heard you, no matter how broken you spoke Spanish.

As the months passed, one date per week progressed into about one date per day. As working professionals, Michael and Lucía spent their daylight hours with their companies but after finishing, spent their evenings and nights in the company of each other. And from that quality time and all the fun, intimate, and deep things that happened in between, their relationship started to bud and in due time, eventually flowered into a label, novio y novia (girlfriend and boyfriend). They vacationed to Colombia together. They traversed through the lush country’s farms, steep mountains, and dense jungles. They toured its colonial cities, drank what the people drank and ate what they ate. Everything they did, they did it together, from getting massages side by side to walking hand in hand along Colombia’s famous coffee farms.

Travel together might be the penultimate test to gauge the sustainability of a relationship—living together being the first. To travel is to experience the unknown, live it, love it, and pop the small bubbles of our ordinary routines and lifestyles. When travel removes all that has become accustomed, travel reveals the only thing that is customary: our base dispositions. And so, compatibility will likely reveal itself in the forested mountains of Colombia, on the muddy trails, when hunger and fatigue set in, and when Michael and Lucía had spent twenty-four hours together. But they did not tire of each other, and perhaps at that time or even way before, they realized this was not just infatuation. This was a potential partner.

But because she was Spanish, she had to renew her work visa to remain in the United States. And by the unluck of the draw, her renewal wasn’t approved. Thus, in November of 2023, she would have to depart the country she didn’t want to leave and the boy she didn’t want to say goodbye to.

Clearly, moving across the world would be a challenge the relationship would have to overcome. Would physical distance transform into emotional separation? They had known each other for a little more than a year at this point. With a pang of irony, they had met with no intentions of starting something serious, but they had found someone to take seriously.

But what if there didn’t have to be a goodbye?

Michael is not the type to make excuses. He lives by a code that what must get done gets done, and if it wasn’t, then one never really wanted it to begin with. So, if Lucía had to leave his motherland, then the motherland would have to be left behind, at least occasionally. He would follow her. She was worth it. Wherever she could find work in Europe, most likely in Spain, he would be by her side insofar as the tourist visa would allow him. In college, Michael always dreamed of living in Europe. Well, this surely expedited that dream.

Obviously, things had heated up. And naturally, the most important thing was how I felt. I was, rightfully so, a little shocked that the relationship had gotten so serious in so short of time. While taking a vacation with your girlfriend is light and fun, living across the pond for 3 months (90 days to be exact) seemed heavy and definite. Romantic, absolutely. Consequential, undoubtedly. I was happy that she made him happy, but less happy his moving made me sad. Yet, as a friend, I suppose all you can ask for is the happiness of that friend, whether that means you’re down the road or across the world. But two years after graduating and now a serious relationship in the picture, the branching out of our lives seemed to quicken in pace, like I could see the fraying of our future paths.

But there was no point in projecting the future while I could appreciate the present, like running with your best friend.

The summer Boston weather, as it would prove for my entire trip, was hot and humid. Temperature wise, though it was only eighty degrees Fahrenheit, ninety percent humidity added unappreciated heat. Even before we had started running, I felt wet and sticky. Now that we were in full stride, I was drenched and slick. About thirty minutes into the run, a welcome shower of rain began to fall, cooling our bodies. As we paced along and as the rain pattered my head and shoes, I felt awake and alive. I was proud to be running this early in Boston with a friend whose presence was even more refreshing than the rain.

We discussed our lives as we ran. Michael was doing well at work and clearly well in personal life. I was curious about relationships and at the time of this run, I had never had a girlfriend before. Michael had had several and therefore was my resident relationship expert. Michael pointed out that one of the reasons I had not had a girlfriend was that I “just haven’t put in the work into loving someone, which is totally fine”. He was right. I never once had I taken the time, work, and chance to love someone, to put my heart out on a silver platter and let it either be loved or devoured. I had never let myself be vulnerable. I had never put in the work to make it so. But as we both noted, it appeared more likely than not that I wasn’t looking for anything serious. As Michael, my relationship doctor, diagnosed, “You’re single because you can’t force something that you simply don’t want”. If Michael’s prognosis for the patient was the same for the doctor himself, then Lucía was clearly something he wanted, without being forced to want it. That was also totally fine.

About five miles into the run, we decided to refuel and eat at a bagel shop in Cambridge, the city across the Charles River from Boston, but perhaps better known as the home of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Inside the bakery, the décor was homey and consisted of shoulder-high bookshelves, indoor plants, and birch furniture. There were many young people enjoying their breakfast inside. Although none of them wore MIT or Harvard labeled swag, I wondered who among them would raise humanity to higher heights or turn out to be an elitist prick, not mutually exclusive events if I may add.

Though it had stopped raining, I was still soaked to the bone. My steps were squishy and my feet sore; but, with a bagel-filled belly, I felt a second wind. We ran back along the north side of the esplanade. The Cambridge side did not have the same visual appeal. There was less greenery and much more concrete in this section of the esplanade. With a focus on finishing the run, Michael and I spoke less frequently, and I like to think simply appreciated each other’s presence. I like to think that the mark of a great friendship is that silences are not the least bit awkward and can be in fact welcome. When we finally arrived back in the stone streets of the North End, we had run about twelve miles in all, and it was only ten-thirty in the morning. With so much day ahead of us, the red eye flight might have been a great idea after all.

After we showered up and rested for a few minutes at Michael’s apartment, the next item on the agenda was to meet Lucía at her apartment in Seaport, a young and modernly designed neighborhood. Whereas the North End is brick, brown, and narrow, Seaport is steel, white, and wide. I was very excited and curious to finally meet Lucía. After picking up and eating delectable Italian sandwiches with scrumptious capicola, mozzarella, and salami on a well-dressed Italian loaf, we walked about fifteen minutes from the North End to Seaport.

Lucía lived in a hotel like building, approximately 30 stories or so, with a doorman and central lobby. In the elevator up, I was a little antsy. This was the girl who had made my friend so happy. This was the girl who could give Michael a friendship that only a romantic partner can. Our meeting, at least in my head, represented an old and new world merging or colliding, depending on how well we meshed. I represented more of the past and she more of the future. The bulk of my time with Michael, at least contiguous time like when we lived together, was behind us. The bulk of her time with him was likely ahead.

Lucía greeted me with a hearty “Hola!” and hug and Michael with a warm look of affection and small kiss. With open arms, a merry smile, and a welcome spirit, she received us into her apartment. She was excited to meet me too. Lucía had large, round blue eyes that were both beautiful and piercing. Eye contact with her felt as if she could see through me. Under her impaling blue gaze, there seemed to be a tacit agreement between us; we had to vet each other, her vetting Michael’s selection of friends and me, her vibe.

Though hard to describe, she had an aura unlike most girls I’ve met, perhaps because she was European and I American. Despite living in a building and neighborhood known for its material ornamentations, she seemed more concerned with the simple things of life: quality conversation, good stories, and great cappuccinos which she made us. She laughed heartily and genuinely. She was indeed as described: super smart, cute, and adventurous. She was lovely and she made Michael feel happy. It was clear his presence made her happy. I couldn’t help but feel happy too.

The sky had cleared, the gray parted to blue, and the sun warmed the city yellow. We were all joyfully chatting on her balcony, overlooking the spectacular view of Boston Harbor with seagulls flying over the immense Atlantic. We admired the Gothic and Georgian architecture of the historic city all the while drinking her homemade cappuccinos. Caffeinated and in good company, we soaked in the gorgeous Saturday scene and listened to our favorite club music tracks.

It was still uncertain how their relationship would develop, though to be fair, life is always equally uncertain too. Would Michael leave for Europe? Would it start out as temporary and then permanent? How often would I see Michael going forward?

But there was no point in projecting the future while I could appreciate the present, like bopping to the deep bass of house music with your best friend and his girlfriend, cherishing a now busy and bustling Boston below.